Ver. 1. Behold, thy father is sick.] And yet it was “Jacob have I loved.” So, “Behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.” (John 11:3) Si amatur, quomodo infirmatur? saith a father. Very well, may we say. The best, before they come to the very gates of death, pass oft through a very strait, long, heavy lane of sickness; and this in mercy, that they may learn more of God and depart with more ease out of the world. Such as must have a member cut off, willingly yield to have it bound, though it be painful; because, when it is mortified and deadened with strait binding, they shall the better endure the cutting of it off: so here, when the body is weakened and wasted with much sickness, that it cannot so bustle, we die more easily. Happy is he, saith a reverend writer, that after due preparation is passed through the gates of death ere he be aware; happy is he that, by the holy use of long sickness, is taught to see the gates of death afar off, and addresseth for a resolute passage. The one dies like Enoch and Elijah; the other like Jacob and Elisha; both blessedly. Dr Hall, Contemp.
Ver. 2. And Israel strengthened himself.] Ipse aspectus viri boni delectat, saith Seneca; sure it is that the sight of a dear friend reviveth the sick. One man, for comfort and counsel, may be an angel to another; nay, as God himself. Such was Nathan to David; Bishop Ridley to King Edward VI; and that poor priest to Edward III, who, when all the king’s friends and favourites forsook him in his last agony, leaving his chamber quite empty, called upon him to remember his Saviour, and to ask mercy for his sins. This none before him would do, every one putting him still in hope of life, though they knew death was upon him. But now, stirred up by the voice of this priest, he showed all signs of contrition; and, at his last breath, expresses the name of Jesus. Dan., Hist. of Engl., 255.
Ver. 3. God Almighty appeared unto me at Luz.] The truly thankful keep calendars and catalogues of God’s gracious dealings with them, and delight, to their last, to recount and reckon them up; not in the lump only, and by wholesale, as it were, but by particular enumeration upon every good occasion; setting them forth one by one, as here, and ciphering them up, as David’s word is. [רפס, Psalms 9:1] We should he like civet boxes, which still retain the scent when the civet is taken out of them. See Psalms 145:1,2 Ex 18:8.
Ver. 4. For an everlasting possession.] This is fully made good to the Israel of God, those heirs of heaven.
Ver. 5. As Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine.] God hath in like sort adopted us for his dear children; saying, “I will be a Father unto them, and they shall be my sons and my daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.” (2 Corinthians 6:18) This St John calls a royalty or prerogative, [εξουσια, John 1:12] such as he elsewhere stands amazed at. (1 John 3:1) And well he may; for all God’s children are “firstborn,” and so “higher than all the kings of the earth.” (Psalms 89:27) They “in the fulness of their sufficiency are in straits.” (Job 20:22) Whereas the saints, in the fulness of their straits, are in an all-sufficiency.
Ver. 6. After the name of their brethren.] That is, of Ephraim and Manasseh; as if they were not their brethren, but their sons. Thus Jacob transfers the birthright from Reuben to Joseph. (1 Chronicles 5:1,2)
Ver. 7. And I buried her there.] He could not carry her to the cave of Machpelah; and he would not bury her at Bethdehem among infidels. This he tells Joseph, to teach him and the rest not to set up their rest anywhere but in the land of Canaan.
Ver. 8. Who are these?] Here Jacob, seeing Joseph’s two sons, and now first understanding who they were, breaks off his speech to Joseph, till the two last verses of the chapter, and starts blessing his sons; teaching us to be “ready to every good word and work,” (Titus 3:1) laying hold of every hint that God puts into our hands, accounting it a mercy that we may have opportunity.
Ver. 9. They are my sons, whom God, &c.] The Lord Christ in like sort presents us to his heavenly Father with, “Here am I, and the children whom thou hast given me.” (Hebrews 2:13) Whereunto the Father replies, as Jacob here, Bring them now unto me, and I will bless them.
Ver. 11. I had not thought to see thy face.] God delights to outbid the hopes of his people, and to be better to them than their deserts, than their desires, yea, than their faith. (Isaiah 54:2,3,12,14) As it is storied of a certain emperor, that he delighted in no undertakings so much as in those that his counsellors and captains held impossible: and he seldom miscarried. So God, Exodus 15:11.
Ver. 12. From between his knees.] That is, From between his father’s knees, that he might place them right to receive the blessing, presenting them again according to their age. This he did for the best; but “God only wise” had otherwise ordered it. We many times think we do well, when it proves much otherwise. “Lean not therefore to thine own understanding,” saith the wise man; (Proverbs 3:5) but make out to him that “dwells with prudence.” (Proverbs 8:12)